You could finally be able to buy an HTC smartwatch in April

An announcement at MWC looks likely

The HTC smartwatch rumours have been doing the rounds for well over a year now, but we're still waiting to see some actual hardware or even a coherent wearable device strategy from the Taiwanese firm.

The HTC Grip fitness tracker was announced and then canned before finally turning up - in a slightly different form - in the Healthbox bundle of devices released in partnership with Under Armour.

Now the number of HTC smartwatch rumours are ramping up again, and a tweet from well-known serial tipster Evan Blass (aka @evleaks) says the wearable is going to be out in April, presumably running Android Wear.

Out of time

An April on-sale date would fit with a launch announcement at Mobile World Congress in February - we'll be reporting from the biggest smartphone tradeshow of the year and will pass on anything HTC has to say.

We're also expecting HTC to show off its new One M10 smartphone at the same time, and with the Vive VR headset on sale later this year the company is obviously keen to get its eggs into as many baskets as possible to stay relevant in a quickly changing gadget landscape.

Let's hope the first true HTC smartwatch is worth the wait: the second generation of Android Wear timepieces have been much more impressive than the first ones were, but there's still lots of room for improvement.